


i feel pretty when you look at me

by enterprisecaptainoikawa



Category: Dream Daddy: A Dad Dating Simulator
Genre: Canon Trans Character, Gen, M/M, Nonbinary Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-06
Updated: 2017-08-06
Packaged: 2018-12-11 18:53:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11720418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enterprisecaptainoikawa/pseuds/enterprisecaptainoikawa
Summary: Robert does tattoos, sometimes.





	i feel pretty when you look at me

**Author's Note:**

> title taken from [this album](https://mallrat.bandcamp.com/)

Robert does tattoos, sometimes. Gave Joseph a cute little stick-and-poke shark on his ankle, once; it was the one thing that lasted longer than the one night between the two of them. He likes doing them—he’s never been much of an artist, but his mistakes are usually of the laughable sort, at least. He’s not much of a laugher. He smirks, anyways, vaguely. Which is an entirely accurate description of the whole of his life. Probably. 

He usually does them on himself—which is why he’s bringing this up now, because right now, a certain gothic individual is standing on his doorstep at god-knows-what-time in the morning, amiably requesting Robert ink him as if it weren’t four a.m., as if it hasn’t been a month or something since the two of them last communicated, as if that last communication hadn’t been Damien smiling and saying hello in the supermarket and Robert just staring emptily at him for ten seconds before mumbling something like a greeting or something back. Damien waits patiently for an answer, and Robert is staring again.

He’s confused, alright. But he’s always liked good old Dames. He’s sweet, but not unbearably so. Just dark enough for Robert’s taste—Joseph and the rest could never really compare, in that respect. He likes Damien. So he shrugs, grins a tired kind of smile, and gestures the man inside, saying, “Sure, what the hell. Come in.” And fifteen minutes later, he’s got good old Dames lying on his couch next to a bunch of old DVDs, his shirt abandoned on the floor so that Robert can easily access the pale—god, is he pale—canvas of his stomach, a few inches of white between the edge of his binder and the band of his boxer briefs.

He wraps some thread from a dollar store sewing kit around a needle and sterilizes the end of it with a snap and a flame from the lighter in his pocket. It’s not the cleanest way of doing things but Damien doesn’t complain, just watches with curious eyes from his spot on the couch as Robert leans over him.

He should probably warn the guy. “This might hurt,” Robert points out, even as he’s reaching for the bottle of ink. 

Damien blinks. “I’m fine with that,” he says, and well, Robert can’t exactly argue. He should probably argue further; he’s awake, but it’s not like it’s four in the afternoon; Damien seems as sure as anyone could be about getting a tattoo, but it’s four in the morning—obviously not the most rational of times in which one could make a permanent decision.

He thinks he gets it, though. He thinks he can catch Damien’s drift, here. He screws off the bottle top and gets to work.

“I like your stomach,” he mumbles, and Damien laughs. Robert brings the needle within a millimeter of that pale-ass canvas.

“You’re thinking just two inches tall, or so? Just the circle and the arrow coming off it; that’s what it looks like, right?”

Damien smiles. There’s a familiar thrill in that look, an anticipation almost visibly curling his body. Robert knows the feeling well. “That’s what it looks like.”

Robert drops the brush to the canvas and paints.

-

“It’s a boy,” he mumbles at five, sleepier now, kind of leaning over Damien, kind of lying next to him on the couch and squishing against him in the narrow space between his skin and the cushions. One of Damien’s hair tickles at his lips; Robert brushes back, entertained by the sensation.

“Thank you,” Damien whispers. Whispering feels necessary in the late hour, in the dim lighting of Robert’s living room with the windows shining black. Damien looks like some kind of cryptid next to Robert, some pale, ethereal being of the dreams had while half-asleep. Uncertain, Robert reaches and takes the man’s hand. It feels pretty real. It’s also very smooth. He moisturizes. Of course he does.

“I have one like that, too, actually,” says Robert. It takes Damien a moment.

He glances at his own newly minted ink—the Mars symbol, a circle and arrow just above his waistband, an affirmation. And he glances back at Robert.

“The same one?” They’re still holding hands. Robert doesn’t let go.

He shakes his head. “Nope. Mine’s, uh. Here,” he says, delaying, and rolls off the couch, squishing Damien in his wake; Damien squeaks, and Robert’s heart grows maybe a fraction of a size, if only for a second or two. 

See, this is why he likes this man.

He unbuttons long-worn jeans, and Damien has the gall to not even startle; he just laughs when Robert pulls down his pants, denim to his ankles, revealing a pair of boxers, hairy thighs, and a stick-and-poke tattoo just above his left knee.

Damien looks: it’s a circle with an x above it with a little line connecting the two shapes. Nonbinary symbol. Damien softens even further than his butter-soft self does regularly; the reaction is beautiful, and somehow makes everything just a little better—the uncertainty simmering under Robert’s skin above his knee, his depression, the things about the world that have him weary—Damien softens, and Robert is both nervous and excited underneath his lazy expression.

“It’s not something I really like to talk about,” he says, buttoning up the jeans again, flopping onto the floor next to Damien. But it’s five in the morning, and the sun is just pressing up against the horizon, or he imagines it is, and Damien has such long hair, it just kind of distracts Robert and has him saying anything in unconscious hopes that the man will stay five minutes longer. It’s so dark, his hair. It reminds him of ink.

“Talk to me, if you’d like to,” Damien says, and he’s serious about it, Robert can tell.

“I’ll shoot you a letter,” he says dryly, and Damien laughs.

-

He doesn’t get up until Saturday afternoon, or what looks like it; the sun’s not supposed to be shining through his bedroom window, but it is, nonetheless. Must be one or two. Absentmindedly, he touches the tattoo he showed Damien before. He remembers the events of the night in pieces while he shakes himself awake.

It’s not a big thing for him, being nonbinary—just kind of a fact, one of the personal sort; he acknowledges it as a part of himself but prefers to keep it there, in his head, like a secret. He’s more comfortable that way. He doesn’t mind masculine pronouns, might have wished for a different body given the choice, but doesn’t really mind the one he has. It’s not something he really likes to talk about. But he doesn’t mind if Damien knows a little. It's a little nice, considering he kind of gets it, and all. Robert's comfortable with it, and maybe, he thinks, maybe the next time the dysphoria gets bad he'll knock on Damien's door. He's got to pay the man back, after all. 

The thought of it, the dysphoria, has him a little short of breath, but he skirts the subject, pulls on the same pair of jeans he'd been wearing the day before, laces up his boots. He's got things to do.

When he goes out to check his mail, there’s a bouquet sitting where Damien’s heels were not twelve hours ago; there’s a damned bouquet, naturally. And a little notecard with hand-done calligraphy, Robert supposes, although it looks nearly flawless— _let’s get together again, sometime,_ it says, and Robert cracks a grin. Maybe, he laughs, too.

Maybe, he'll talk about it a little, him being what he is. And he'll feel a little better, and a little less alone.

**Author's Note:**

> hit me up on [twitter](https://twitter.com/unicorn__tommo) or [tumblr](http://enterprisecaptainoikawa.tumblr.com/) to talk about these two honestly


End file.
